When there is lockdown and one can’t go out, what do the jobless feminists and ‘Doctorates’ of Social Sciences do? Well, they create new narrative to keep their agenda of universal victimhood going. You would have already seen this in many forums that there was a desperate push to create an urge for more funds for women’s cause for increased domestic abuse during lockdown period by their partners.

In this article, Five ways governments are responding to violence against women and children during COVID-19 UNICEF claimed that women and children are subjected to increased violence during lockdown and countries have already taken some steps to curb the same but more are required (basically pay more money to UNICEF).

In the title of this article UNICEF as usual ignored that men can be victims of domestic violence as well and basically created a class of abusers and victims based on gender. The title itself showed that without any meaningful basis why men continue to get injustice in domestic violence cases, especially when the chances of those cases increasing increased many folds when those abusive women were at home.

The UNICEF article used the above image from Instagram as the featured image with a caption that said, this is a photo from a teen who was documenting her life. The photo shows multiple cuts on her marking possible (domestic) violence. So, this photo showed that teens are undergoing domestic violence at home during the lockdown and there are teens who are sharing their life’s experience in a series “Covid-19 photos for teens” on Instagram.

This photo, however, was uploaded like this –

So, basically, this photo was related to quarantine but an innovative representation of coming out with creative ideas during the quarantine. After reading the caption by the photographer it doesn’t seem to be related to domestic violence at all.

Even the series was not remotely related to domestic violence experience that the teens had shared. Some more examples of photographs can clarify that –

In this photo, she was painting during quarantine and those are not her blood marks or signs of abuse, but paints that she would have smeared on her face.

In this photo, she may seem to be depressed, but that is due to quarantine and inactivity and not due to domestic violence.

Even this photo shows that we should prevent our own hands touching our face unnecessarily rather than signifying any abuse that she may be going through.

As you can see that all these photos can be considered as photos of domestic abuse of these women but none actually are. But the way UNICEF portrayed this series, it was as if teens from various countries were posting during lockdown that they were undergoing abuse.

The UNICEF campaign also says that violence against children and women is widespread in the world and are interlinked. They refer to a study titled Bridging the gaps: a global review of intersections of violence against women and violence against children written by Alessandra Guedes, Sarah Bott, Claudia Garcia-Moreno and Manuela Colombini. Basically, this paper is a compilation of Intimate Partner Violence surveys in different countries across the globe. However, one important point to remember that none of these surveys was done neutrally and all were gender-biased.

In many of our previous studies, we have shown how these surveys are generally biased and are created with a mindset to show men as abusers. This article shows how the United Nations has created a false narrative of Domestic Violence in India through biased question design and extremely skewed method of surveys. In this article, you can see how the NFHS survey portrayed wives’ mood swings as Marital rape. Examples are aplenty and can be drawn from any country. Thus, any secondary research done based on such skewed and one-sided national surveys is likely to be biased and trash.

UNICEF claimed that they had enough evidence that “confinement, social isolation, increased levels of financial stress, and weak institutional responses—can increase or intensify levels of violence.” To claim that, however, UNICEF has used another study titled, “Pandemics and Violence Against Women and Children” by Amber Peterman, Alina Potts, Megan O’Donnell, Kelly Thompson, Niyati Shah, Sabine Oertelt-Prigione and Nicole van Gelder. As clearly visible from the title itself the study was conducted only about violence against women and children and the violence against men (and boys as well) was not focused. If the factors affecting domestic violence is indeed true, then it should affect men equally, but none of the studies ever conducted or reported by global organizations such as UNICEF seemed to have focused on that. By ignoring domestic violence against men the UN has created a ‘class’ of abusers based on gender.

This is the reason TMF conducted a national survey on domestic violence against men by their female partners exactly the same way NFHS has conducted their surveys to understand domestic violence against women. We have referred to the Domestic Violence Act of India and categorically taken all actions that are considered as domestic violence by law, and asked men if they had ever faced such situations in their conjugal lives. The results were astonishing.

The fact that the global organizations keep referring to biased articles and biased studies and create more biased material disqualify all their research papers from being just and worth considering of any value. When the entire system of reporting domestic violence worldwide is a fraud, considers only men as abusers and women as victims, then none of the news items and none of the research papers should be considered.

The article also elaborates the steps taken by various countries worldwide to stop domestic violence against women. One point to observe in all such steps is that all countries only focus on women as victims and continue to support the UN’s biased agenda. In other words, it will not be wrong to say that there is no help available for male victims of domestic abuse worldwide.

One of the narratives that was very much discussed during the entire lockdown period was how consumption of alcohol increased domestic violence. UNICEF article also says that Greenland has banned all alcohol sales in its capital Nuuk to reduce domestic violence. Meanwhile, in India, women cutting across geographic barrier were seen preparing for domestic violence against men and children like this –

Even though UNICEF report mentions that the relationship between alcohol consumption and domestic violence is complex, they tried to establish that men under the influence of alcohol resort to domestic abuse. The whole article was written considering men as the abusers. But when it has become evident that women do drink a lot nowadays, then they are bringing a new narrative that ‘excessive drinking’ or ‘harmful drinking’ leads to domestic violence so that only men can be blamed.

Such biased campaigns by international organizations keep making the situation worse for male victims. In a 2006 study by the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare, India it was found that it is the women or female members of a family that are responsible for domestic violence on children. Men are not found to be as much committing violence. Still, only men are blamed for all domestic violence. After 2006, however, such kind of study was not done in India. Despite this, UNICEF tried to portray only men as abusers of children which is a straight lie.

This discussion raises serious concern about the agenda behind running such global bodies that fail to address the real problem but create more problems. Such campaigns are the reason why not only men are denied justice, but children are denied justice as well. Very often men are forced to remain in abusive relationships thinking that no one will hear their side of the story. Even children are forced to stay with their mothers in most custody battles and when the mother is more abusive than the father, they are often left with the abusive parent.

So, it is important that we stop funding to all such organizations that create such biased narrative or propagate these. Exposing such biased campaigns whenever these come our way is also important. UNICEF is yet again trying to push this harmful campaign on us, only this time they are exposed.

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*For other campaign analysis click – here